


A Delightful Day in Bath

by Eigon



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28319028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eigon/pseuds/Eigon
Summary: A few years ago, I had a delightful day out in Bath, and I thought it would be a perfect place for Crowley and Aziraphale to visit.  There's no plot - just an angel and a demon having a pleasant time together.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 9





	A Delightful Day in Bath

Crowley was bored, and when he was bored, he started plotting mischief.  
Aziraphale noted developments in passing, but decided to wait until the mischief manifested itself before he mentioned anything. For the moment, he was quite happy to potter round the cottage and occasionally brave Crowley's driving to visit a nearby restaurant.

"Got a surprise for you," Crowley said, one sunny summer's morning. "It's a bit of a drive, though."  
Ah, so the mischief had been planned, then.  
"Do I need to pack anything?" Aziraphale asked, "pajamas, or books, or something to nibble on the way?"  
"We're staying two nights," Crowley said.  
"So, pajamas, then...."  
"And you might want to pick up Persuasion, or one of those Regency romances you like – something by Georgette Heyer, maybe?"  
Aziraphale beamed at him, and picked out Bath Tangle. He had a fairly shrewd idea of where they were going to be staying now.

The Bentley drew up outside Pratt's Hotel in the middle of the afternoon.   
"Oh, this is quite charming," Aziraphale said.  
"I stayed here the last time I was in Bath," Crowley said. "Must be, oh, two hundred years ago now. I remember they took the sedan chairs right inside – the staircases were especially wide so they could carry people up to their rooms on the first floor."  
"Regency fashion suited you, my dear," Aziraphale said. He'd been a little old-fashioned even then, still wearing knee breeches when Beau Brummel's long trousers had come into almost universal use.  
"And you always had a finely turned calf in white stockings," Crowley said, fondly. He led the way into the reception area. "By the way, I booked a double room, so there's only one bed."  
Aziraphale returned his grin. "That will be just splendid, my dear."

They walked as far as the Pulteney Bridge, after they'd checked in, along the river.  
"Did you have any plans for dinner?" Aziraphale asked. I believe there's a place that serves oysters...." When he'd noticed that Crowley was planning something, he'd done a little research as well.  
"That's for tomorrow, after the Roman Baths," Crowley said. "Tonight, I thought we'd try the Sally Lunn – they do something that they claim is a medieval trencher...."

Aziraphale patted his lips with his napkin. "Hmm, not bad for a modern guess at what a trencher used to be like," he said. He smiled. "Actually, I think the modern flavours are rather better. Medieval meals could get a bit monotonous in winter, after all."

The following morning, they ambled up the hill to the Circus and the Royal Crescent, and made their way down from there. "It really hasn't changed much at all," Aziraphale mused, looking around at the Royal Crescent. "I mean, further down the hill there are some unfortunate modern buildings, but here, one could almost be walking into the middle of Persuasion. Or Bath Tangle, of course – Georgette Heyer's writing is always such fun."  
"I think I was further North at the time," Crowley said, "encouraging mill owners to set up with really bad conditions for the workers. And then fomenting discontent and encouraging the workers to form unions. Didn't take much fomenting, to be honest."  
"I was terribly busy in London, of course," Aziraphale said. He smiled fondly at the memory. "Those first years at the bookshop – it was the most contented I'd been for centuries."  
Crowley thought about how that time of contentment had so nearly been snatched away from Aziraphale, but mentioning it would spoil the mood. They were having such a perfect day so far – and Gabriel would always be a wanker.  
"So, what about a spot of tea, then?" he asked instead. "Or did you want to go into the Jane Austen Centre first?"  
Aziraphale pondered. "To be truthful, I have no desire to be photographed with a waxwork of Jane Austen, or to try writing with a quill pen – I know perfectly well how to do that already. I'm sure it's perfectly jolly for people who like that sort of thing...."  
"Tea, then," Crowley said, leading the way.

The Bath Tea Emporium had a big black kettle hanging outside as a shop sign, just like the shops Aziraphale remembered from two hundred years before. The ground floor sold the loose leaf teas, but down in the basement was the cafe, where they could sample the teas. It was a little gloomy to be really charming, and there was no view, but the selection of teas really was most impressive.  
"They do cakes, too," Crowley said, waving at the selection behind the counter.  
Aziraphale shook his head. "Not this time, I think. I want to savour the taste of the tea without any interference." He consulted the menu thoughtfully. "Lets see how their Russian Caravan Tea compares to the Ritz, shall we?" he said.  
When the waitress brought the tray, she asked: "Have you been here before?"  
They shook their heads, and she drew their attention to a little timer on the tray. "When this pings, that's when the tea will be perfectly brewed and ready to pour," she said.  
"How delightful," Aziraphale said. He watched the timer like a hawk, and as soon as it went 'ping' he grasped the handle of the teapot.  
"Oh, now this really is very good," he said, happily.  
When they made their way back upstairs, Aziraphale spent some time choosing packets of tea to take away with him, and made sure he picked up their details for ordering by post for the future.

They spent some time in the Roman Baths, reminiscing about Rome. "It's always a little odd to see these places as ruins," Aziraphale said, "when we remember what they looked like when they were new – that's to say, I never came to these baths, but I went regularly in Rome. There was a very good masseuse at the Baths of Agrippa."

"Where now, my dear?" Aziraphale asked, when they had managed to extricate themselves from the gift shop.  
Crowley grinned. "Can I tempt you to some oysters? The Scallop Shell is just over this way."

"It feels quite odd to eat oysters sitting up, instead of reclining on a couch," Aziraphale said, "but these are very good. What do you have planned next? I must say, I'm feeling very much indulged."  
"And so you should. I like to indulge you. This next one's for me, though."

They walked together out of the centre of Bath into residential streets lined with terraced Georgian houses.  
Crowley stopped outside one of them. It looked no different to any other in the row apart from the brass plaque by the door, and the "Open" sign on the railings. Crowley was looking positively enthusiastic now. "This, angel," he said, "is the Herschel Museum. Come on...." He hurried Aziraphale through the house to the small formal garden at the rear, and came to a halt beside the central flower bed. "It was here," he said, waving his arms around excitedly. "They set up the telescope here – William ground the lenses himself in that shed we passed back there – and they pointed it at the night sky, and they were the first humans to see the planet Uranus! Isn't that brilliant?"  
"Oh, look – there's a little statue of them in the shrubbery," Aziraphale said.  
Crowley looked at it critically. "I suppose it looks a bit like them," he said doubtfully. "I came here once, not long after they made the discovery. All sorts of famous people were visiting them then – I just hung around in the background and listened to them talking about stars. You'll never guess what they wanted to call the new planet," he added.  
"Not Uranus, I take it?"  
"George." They both laughed. "Seriously – George! Thank Someone that didn't stick!"  
"Though didn't Galileo want to call the moons round Jupiter after the Medici family?"  
"Fancy you knowing that, angel! That didn't stick either."  
"Did you ever see them again?" Aziraphale asked, "the Herschels, I mean?"  
I met them properly later, when they were building that forty foot telescope in Slough, of all places." Crowley grinned. "I got on best with Caroline. She was tiny, but what a woman! Her speciality was comets. Love comets! Kind of missed her when she went back to Germany. Never did manage to get over there to visit her again, though she did live 'til she was 98."  
"You'd have had to say you were your own son," Aziraphale said.  
"Or grandson, even, by then," Crowley agreed.  
They spent a lot of time in the small museum, examining the notebooks and the instruments rather more closely than the museum staff would have liked, if they'd noticed the cabinets being opened and the exhibits being taken out for a better look.  
"Such an elegant period, the eighteenth century," Aziraphale sighed, looking round at the room full of period furniture. Crowley was leaning over the model of the forty foot telescope with a big grin on his face.  
"What gets me," Crowley said, "is that they made this brilliant discovery here. I mean, what's special about here? Nothing! It's an ordinary garden of an ordinary house in a provincial town, and these extraordinary humans looked up at the night sky and discovered so much about the universe! And then they went on to Slough!"  
"Come happy bombs and fall on Slough, It isn't fit for people now," quoted Aziraphale. "I don't think Betjeman had much interest in astronomy."

They were thrown out, in the end, very politely, as the museum closed for the evening.  
They strolled back together to Pratt's Hotel.  
"I must let you get bored more often," Aziraphale said, after a while, "so that you come up with more schemes like this one. It really has been a delightful day."


End file.
